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FAMILY LITERACY DAY
Happy Family Literacy Day every one!
Here’s a fun idea to celebrate – find a well loved book that has the same number of characters as there are in your family and have a family play. It doesn’t matter if you have an audience or not, as I guarantee that most of the fun will be in the preparations. Costumes are a must, the best ones are scavenged from around the house.
I remember doing this as a kid. My much older brother landed the part of a bee (I seem to remember that it was the main protagonist). As his only line was to say “Buzz” he made a comic strip type bubble out of card and wrote “Buzz” in it. I thought that it was wonderful!
5 STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO IMPROVE INTELLIGENCE
Dr Marian Diamond from Berkeley University has spent her life studying the brain. She was the first person to take samples of Einstein’s brain and compare them to samples of other brains to try to unlock the secrets to Einstein’s remarkable intelligence.
Diamond has a 5 step system to increase intelligence in both adults and children. Interestingly enough the steps are simple…no brain surgery required.
1. Diet: A healthy diet feeds the brain as much as the body.
2. Exercise: Exercise builds better brain cells.
3. Challenge: Children don’t have to worry about this as they are still discovering so much of the world. Adults can get stuck in a rut, when was the last time you challenged yourself?
4. Newness: We have what is called a “Reticular Formation” which is the name of the nerve system that runs through the spine and is fed by all the nerves in the body. It loves new sensations and feelings. New stimulations are fed directly to the brain.
5. Love: An underestimated but very important part of everyday life.
THERE’S A NEW NOG IN NOTCH HILL
Announcing the birth of Alexander Benjamin Lott – Born August 14 2009. Weighing in at 7lbs 12oz.
Me – Happy, but absolutely exhauste
d after 50 hrs of labour.
SLOW PARENTING
I’m very pregnant right now and have been reading a lot about slow birthing on Jacquie Munroe’s Blog and it has made me think a lot about slow parenting and the slow movement in general.
We’ve heard it all before “life’s too busy, we need to slow down and smell the roses.” We all agree, but we just find it hard to find the time to slow down. Speaking as a typical A-type personality I certainly didn’t have the time to slow down until pregnancy forced it upon me. But here I am and I have been thinking a lot about “Slow Parenting”
So what is Slow Parenting?
Slow Parenting is about trusting that your child is the best person to be in charge of their own development. By that I mean trusting that your child will explore and develop at the pace that is right for them. Slow Parenting allows children to engage in creative play with what ever is to hand (cardboard boxes, dolls, climbing frames etc) instead of filling the child’s schedule with organised sports, music lessons and dance classes. Sure these things are great, just every thing in moderation as every one needs down time.
Slow Parenting is about really spending time with your kids, it could be as simple as making an extra special dinner together or you could have fun playing some games together. See my website for learning games that you can play with your child.
If you’re like me, you probably agree that this is a great idea but wonder where you will find the time for all this. That’s ok, you don’t need to be an Uber Slow Parent overnight. Try one thing and see if it works for you and your child, then try another. There’s no need to rush into Slow Parenting.
SIMPLE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO INSPIRE YOUR CHILD TO READ.
The beginnings of reading start long before children learn the alphabet. To learn to read a child must want to learn to read and for a child to want to learn to read they must be exposed to language from an early age.
What most parents don’t realise is that they are naturally doing so many things right. Young children don’t need to be sat down with educational aids in order to learn to read – I’ve composed a list of the simple stuff that you’re likely already doing that is better than any of the “educational products” on the market.
During Pregnancy – Laugh, sing and hum as much as you can. Your baby loves the vibrations. Personally I don’t buy into the “spending hours talking to your belly” philosophy. The baby learns your voice as you talk to the people around you of course it doesn’t harm any one to talk to your belly… especially after one of those swift kicks to the internal organ you never knew you had before!
New Borns – Wearing a baby in a sling is calming for the baby but also helps remind the parent carrying the child to talk to the child. Even though your baby is barely concious in the world, hearing the parent’s voices is soothing and helps the child develop the language parts of their brain.
6 months onwards – Keep up that dialogue with your child, use their name frequently as studies have shown that it is the first word that they understand. As children learn words they use them as placeholders in the sentences you speak in order to help understand them.
- Help children learn nouns by naming things as you use them. For example “spooon, knife” etc. If you child points at something, hold it up and tell them what it is before you give it to them.
- Don’t be shy to sing silly songs and read your child rhyming stories like “Goodnight Moon” or some of the simpler Dr Seuss books. These silly and nonsencical stories teach children a lot about language.
Toddlers – Keep up with the dialogue, the silly songs and the stories. The more you interact with your child the more developed their language centres of the brain will be.
- Try to read a story to your child every night. As you read, stop and ask questions like “What do you think will happen next?” “How do you think that the boy feels?” and any thing about the pictures in the book. I love the illustrations in children’s books there are often tiny details to be discovered in the pictures that add to the story beautifully.
Preschool – Teach your child to write their name then have fun spotting the letters from their name on signs around town.
- Keep reading at night to your child… especially books that rhyme.
- Keep playing silly games and singing silly songs together.
- Don’t feel that your child needs to be reading or even knowing all the alphabet yet. Once you’re child is ready for it you will know, waiting for your child to direct their learning instead of pushing them too soon may be one of the biggest gifts you give them in life.
SATURDAY MORNING PONDERINGS
As I lay in bed this morning reading the Saturday paper I began to get the sense (again) that the world is going quite nutty.
First I read an article talking about how meditation can help children with sleep anxiety problems. I’ve heard of this before, and while I prefer meditation to the alternative – medication, I still ponder on why children have become so anxious. When I was a kid, none of my friends complained of insomnia from lying awake at night worrying about the pressing issues in their lives. Is it the lack of creative free play in their over scheduled lives or is it that as parents we are too busy to really listen to our children? Whatever the cause I feel for those kids and hope that they can get the help they need to manage their stress before they reach adulthood.
A few pages on I stumbled on an article on all-day kindergarten (I can’t find the link for it). It started off as a bit of a scan read as my personal opinion is that all-day kindergarten could be great or it could be terrible – I believe it has more to do with the curriculum and amount of free play time the child has than the amount of time the kid spends in school. In fact, it’s probably better for a kid to spend the day in one place than be shuttled off to half a day of day care after kindergarten has finished.
I was brought up short in my internal monologue/rant when I read that all day kindergarten was being proposed for the 3-5 yr age group. Yes, you read that right – they are actually proposing that it would be a good idea to have 3 year olds attend full day kindergarten. Amongst many thoughts that began flying through my mind, I wondered if this would also involve the toddlers being sent out into the playground with all the rest of the older kids at break time?!? Incidentally the picture accompanying the article showed a math teacher sat in front of a class of regular kindergarten aged kids teaching them math by pointing to a black board – so much for experiential education.
The article was debating the convenience factor for the parents vs how much it would cost the tax payers. It seemed to miss the part where it discussed what would be best for the children.
So on one page we have anxious children who can’t sleep at night and on the next page we are proposing sending toddlers to school full time. Later on in the day I checked my blog feeds and found an article by British journalist Graeme Patton “Four-year-olds given therapy to improve behaviour” which talks about techniques used in schools to control unruly children and reduce suspensions in the 4-7 age groups. (What on earth are four-year-olds doing that requires suspension!?!) My “favourite” part of the article is that schools have been putting on evening classes to teach parents how to handle their children’s bad behaviour!
So here’s my solution – take the tax money that would be spent on full day kindergarten for 3-5 year olds and create tax breaks for parents who stay at home with their kids. Let’s turn parenting into something that everyone can do like it has been throughout history.
TINY EYE & 20 MOST USEFUL WEBSITES FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
I just wanted to share this post from the Tiny Eye blog with you.
The Telegraph (a UK newspaper) recently posted an article called the “20 most useful websites for children and families” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/familyadvice/3356119/The-20-most-useful-websites-for-children-and-families.html
Which is kind of an interesting scan through – but then the Tiny Eye Blog “upped” it by adding extra hints, tips and things to do while on the websites with your child that are beneficial from a speech language pathologist point of view.
http://tinyeye.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/20-most-useful-websites-for-children-and-families/
I’m all over this – any way that we can combine technology with socialisation sounds like a winner to me!
RECOMMENDED READING
The Share A Story – Shape a future blog has published some great book lists for summer reading. The really good news is that they have categorised the lists into different groups to make finding the right book for your child easier.
Toddler and Preschool books can be found here
Picture books and easy readers can be found here
Courtesy of Jen Robinson
POVERTY AND ILLITERACY
Here is an interesting study completed in Buffalo linking the effects of Poverty on illiteracy.
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/272726.html
MODERN LIFE TURNING GENERATION OF CHILDREN INTO SAD LONERS
MODERN LIFE TURNING GENERATION OF CHILDREN INTO SAD LONERS: U.K. STUDY
BEHAVIOUR / Survey finds children are losing the ability to play and make friends easily
Writer: GRAEME PATON
LONDON — Britain’s children are struggling to make friends at school because they spend too much time playing computer games and listening to MP3 players, according to teachers.
An increase in “solitary pass-times” has damaged children’s social skills and fuelled feelings of loneliness among a generation of young people, they say.
The findings are revealed, in a survey of primary teachers by Save The Children.
The conclusions come amid growing concerns that the toxic mix of modern life, including exposure to electronic entertainment, junk food and over competitive schooling, is poisoning childhood.
More than 70 percent of teachers said that increased use of games consoles, cell phones, the internet and MP3 players has harmed children’s ability to interact with their peers.
A third said that, since they started teaching, they had seen an increase in the number of pupils who struggle to make friends and more children who stand alone in the playground or classroom.
Save The Children said that the decline in children’s ability to play and make friends in their early years would make it harder for adults to form long-term relationships and interact with colleagues at work.
According to the charity, a rise in solitary activities has coincided with a decline in traditional playground pastimes, such as games of hopscotch, tag and football.
A report by Daily Telegraph